How to Make Facebook Work for Your Business
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Facebook Marketing for SME
Return to the articles' index. How to Make Facebook Work for Your Business was first published in the New Zealand Tourism Guide's August 2011 newsletter. It was aimed primarily at owners of small and medium-sized tourism businesses in New Zealand.
How to Make Facebook Work for Your Business
If you are keen to try out Facebook for your business, then you can either create a business account or from your personal account a 'business' page. (It's important as a business to stick to Facebook's rules so make sure you read up on them before you start.) It's also important to get your settings right, but here are a few things to start:
- Add feeds from your blog and other social media accounts (e.g. Twitter) to your Facebook profile
- Keep private parts of your personal profile, creating different audience 'lists'and limit business contacts' access to your own photos (see Facebook settings)
- Add your newsletter subscription information to your profile
- With 25 'likes' (from friends, family or business contacts), you can publish a Facebook vanity URL (one which includes your brand or business name). You can then add this to your email signature and if you really like Facebook, add it to your printed marketing literature too.
What to Publish
It's easy to think as Facebook as a way of communicating to your business market much in the same way as you would with friends and family due to its informal nature. However, it's important to remember that your Facebook page is about your business, so stick to posts relevant to your business and your real target market. Here are a few suggestions on what to publish:
- Post updates about your business: upcoming events, new staff appointments, new products and general news
- Publish links to other websites and online resources that may be of genuine interest to your market (not those which compete with yours of course). For example, you may want to post links to the latest weather in your region, an event or attraction or favourable currency rate
- Post useful customer service information such as you would publish on your website's FAQ page
- Help increase your business: Post discounts, special offers and referral incentives. By giving your Facebook audience promotional codes to use when they make their bookings with you, you can also measure how successful your Facebook page is in driving business
- You can also use Facebook advertising to promote your business. Basically this works by posting your ads on pages seen by Facebook users whose user habits suggest they're an appropriate audience. (There have been suggestions that the click through rate on Facebook ads is rather low, so it's important to keep an eye on your ROI).
Management Tips
- Don't get into trouble – View Facebook's user guidelines including their Ads & Business Solutions information to make sure you are using Facebook correctly. Check back from time to time, so you don't miss any of its latest offerings and features.
- Keep up to date – Change your offers regularly (weekly) and make sure you respond to any comments (both positive and negative).
- Measure the feedback – If you just want to keep up with the times by using Facebook, then that in itself is a perfectly legitimate reason to be using it for your business. Don't forget to check the bottom line though and monitor how much money/business a Facebook page generates for you.
- 'Favourites' (if you're using Internet Explorer/IE)
- 'Bookmarks' (if you're using Firefox).
Glossary
If any of these terms sound like a foreign language to you, please don't stew about it. You can refer to the (easy-to-understand) glossary of terms for more information.
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